The ages of a group of 120 randomly selected adult females have a standard deviation of 18.1 years. Assume that the ages of female statistics students have less variation than ages of females in the general population, so let σ=18.1 years for the sample size calculation. How many female statistics student ages must be obtained in order to estimate the mean age of all female statistics students? Assume that we want 95% confidence that the sample mean is within one-half year of the population mean. Does it seem reasonable to assume that the ages of female statistics students have less variation than ages of females in the general population?

Definition Definition Measure of central tendency that is the average of a given data set. The mean value is evaluated as the quotient of the sum of all observations by the sample size. The mean, in contrast to a median, is affected by extreme values. Very large or very small values can distract the mean from the center of the data. Arithmetic mean: The most common type of mean is the arithmetic mean. It is evaluated using the formula: μ = 1 N ∑ i = 1 N x i Other types of means are the geometric mean, logarithmic mean, and harmonic mean. Geometric mean: The nth root of the product of n observations from a data set is defined as the geometric mean of the set: G = x 1 x 2 ... x n n Logarithmic mean: The difference of the natural logarithms of the two numbers, divided by the difference between the numbers is the logarithmic mean of the two numbers. The logarithmic mean is used particularly in heat transfer and mass transfer. ln x 2 − ln x 1 x 2 − x 1 Harmonic mean: The inverse of the arithmetic mean of the inverses of all the numbers in a data set is the harmonic mean of the data. 1 1 x 1 + 1 x 2 + ...